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I bet there is still some shitty hosting company somewhere offering Perl4 CGI script hosting. Doesn't mean we should do anything except laugh at their incompet

I bet there is still some shitty hosting company somewhere offering Perl4 CGI script hosting. Doesn't mean we should do anything except laugh at their incompetence (or perhaps be impressed by their ability to monetise other people's incompetence...)

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Until it becomes a vector for malware. Shouldn't be laughed at, since it's going to waste person hours in the future.
simcop2387 7y ago
No idea about CGI hosting, but I do allow perl 4 (and 3 and 2 and 1) scripts to run on my pastebin, https://perl.bot/ https://perl.bot/ . In this case it's not incompetence but insanity.
- bigiain 7y ago
  Nice! Much respect. That’s retro-cool.
  - simcop2387 7y ago
    That's also why I added COBOL, that and to test some ideas on how to handle compiled languages on it. The backend service supports multiple files but I haven't finished the web side of things to handle that (I have a strange requirement to make it work without javascript).
    - bigiain 7y ago
      If you're after stupid suggestions, would it be "breaking your personal rules" to use only enough Javascript to allow just enough of a transpiled version of the in-browser Java runtime to let '90s vintage Java Applets run? Or maybe Flash? (And no, I'm 100% not offering to do any of the work required to make that come true... ;-) )
      - simcop2387 7y ago
        I'd be willing to try something like that, but both flash and java applets are horrendously complex. The javascript restriction is because it's mostly used by us perl developers on irc and there's a few disgruntled greybeards that will actually use it via lynx or links. Closest thing for flash is shumway, https://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ https://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ which might be possible to make work but it's still got a lot of compatibility issues from what i hear.
- _kst_ 7y ago
  How did you get the older Perls working? (I've tried and failed to get them to build on Ubuntu.)
  - simcop2387 7y ago
    Manually patching the source in a few places, most of the time it's just adding a header file or two since some of them predate ANSI C and the standardized header files. The other things have to do with adding -DHAS_... to force them to know that opendir and friends are actually present, so that make install will actually work.
    - _kst_ 7y ago
      Any chance you could release the patches?

toomuchtodo 7y ago

Until it becomes a vector for malware. Shouldn't be laughed at, since it's going to waste person hours in the future.

simcop2387 7y ago

No idea about CGI hosting, but I do allow perl 4 (and 3 and 2 and 1) scripts to run on my pastebin, https://perl.bot/ https://perl.bot/ . In this case it's not incompetence but insanity.

bigiain 7y ago
Nice! Much respect. That’s retro-cool.
- simcop2387 7y ago
  That's also why I added COBOL, that and to test some ideas on how to handle compiled languages on it. The backend service supports multiple files but I haven't finished the web side of things to handle that (I have a strange requirement to make it work without javascript).
  - bigiain 7y ago
    If you're after stupid suggestions, would it be "breaking your personal rules" to use only enough Javascript to allow just enough of a transpiled version of the in-browser Java runtime to let '90s vintage Java Applets run? Or maybe Flash? (And no, I'm 100% not offering to do any of the work required to make that come true... ;-) )
    - simcop2387 7y ago
      I'd be willing to try something like that, but both flash and java applets are horrendously complex. The javascript restriction is because it's mostly used by us perl developers on irc and there's a few disgruntled greybeards that will actually use it via lynx or links. Closest thing for flash is shumway, https://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ https://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ which might be possible to make work but it's still got a lot of compatibility issues from what i hear.
_kst_ 7y ago
How did you get the older Perls working? (I've tried and failed to get them to build on Ubuntu.)
- simcop2387 7y ago
  Manually patching the source in a few places, most of the time it's just adding a header file or two since some of them predate ANSI C and the standardized header files. The other things have to do with adding -DHAS_... to force them to know that opendir and friends are actually present, so that make install will actually work.
  - _kst_ 7y ago
    Any chance you could release the patches?